[BITList] A good one to pass an evening - for the Engineers.

[HUGH]

John,

I'm in the middle of something - I look forward to seeing the videos tomorrow.  During my first year in Kincaids I did 6 months in the Finishing Shop with Bernard Kok, a Dutchman from Groningen, and made a small engine.  Here it is from an article I wrote on my apprenticeship.

"My first journeyman there was Bernard Kok, a short, thin, slightly hunched Dutchman from Groningen.  He smoked roll-ups with his eyes slitted against the smoke until there was barely a sliver of unburned tobacco between his lips and the glowing end.  He spoke in fast and heavily accented English, and he was a superb craftsman with the most exacting standards. Even parts that would never see the light of day after assembly had to be polished.  To this day I cannot bear a rough edge on a piece of metal.  Bernard was the kind of man who paints the tops of doors. I spent hours filing smooth, rubbing with file and emery, then polishing some levers that would spend their lives immersed in oil inside a control box attached to one of a few Polar diesels Kincaid built at the Arthur Street works.  I protested that nobody would ever see them after the whole was boxed up, so who would care? "I would care," said Bernard, and that was the end of it.  It rubbed off on me. Much later, when I had gone to sea, I got odd comments from colleagues who were puzzled by my insistence on polishing things that would be covered up. 
 

Most of the time he was even-tempered, but sometimes his patience was tried. I was sent to look for a spanner of a certain size. He had the exact one in his tool box, but he wanted to hammer it, and he was loath to abuse one of his own. I searched around the adjoining area and found one I thought might suit.  He grabbed it, muttering about the delay, and applied it energetically to the nut. It immediately slipped and skinned his knuckles. "Take the ploddy thing away", he shouted.  I could find nothing else, so I came back still holding it, rehearsing an excuse.  Before I could say anything he grabbed the tool and attacked the nut.  Unaccountably, it didn't slip.  "Ploddy better," he said.

 

Once Willie Muirhead the under-foreman, wishing to speak to him, whistled down from the raised gallery on which his office sat.  Bernard studiously ignored the summons, and Willie had to come down the stairs.  "Did you not hear me whistling?" he asked.  Bernard was all concern.  "Was that you?" he said.  "I yost thought it was a wee dog somebody was whistling on." 

 

While with Bernard I made a model single cylinder oscillating engine, with a small flywheel.  Bernard was supportive of such digressions, asking only that the model be finished and able to run.  It ran on compressed air, as did a "turbine" that consisted of a brass disk with "blades" cut round the rim, and a short bit of round bar for a shaft, set in bearings. On its test run with compressed air this achieved an impressive speed with a very loud whine, then the rotor took off and disappeared into the blue, never to be seen again."



Hugh.
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